Lolly Batty: Philatelic Items

Softcover | 21 x 29.7 cm | 68 pp

The Everyday Press | 9781912458158 | 2022

Edition of 1000 copies 

Philatelic Items documents 220 works produced over ten years by Lolly Batty. It includes an index showing the envelopes followed by a selection printed at actual-size. ⁣
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Batty’s work playfully explores a geometric and systemic logic through the colour and value of the stamps used and their positioning on the envelope. Some envelopes have stamps forming ‘magic squares’ where each row, column and diagonal add up to the same number, some only prime numbers, while others explore the Fibonacci sequence.

The aesthetic appeal of the colour combinations and geometric forms is an outcome of the series, not its main aim. Bearing traces of their passage through the world and the postal system each is also a collaboration with the anonymous hand that franks or cancels the stamps. Some of these collaborators have taken a clear pleasure in adding to the harmony of the composition, others have chosen to aggressively negate it. ⁣

Since the 1980s Lolly Batty showed her work extensively including solo exhibitions at Victoria Miro Gallery (1986) and Cabinet (1992). Lolly Batty died in 2025.